Review: The Letter Writer

Arts Festival

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PHIL REID/The Dominion Post Zoom

THE BOYS FROM VENEZUELA: Los Amigos Invisibles, from left, Juan M Roura, Julio Briceno, Maurigo Arcas, Armando Figueredo, and Jose R Torres.

SLEEPER HIT: The Letter Writer was one of the highlights of the New Zealand Arts Festival.

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The Letter Writer, written and directed by Juliet O'Brien
Circa Theatre.
Until March 21

There is nothing quite as pleasurable as sitting in a theatre where 200 individuals are made one while in the thrall of a play and all the elements of theatre coalesce in such a way that you know nothing will break the spell.

On Sunday night, Juliet O'Brien's The Letter Writer cast such a spell with her fluid, exciting and purposeful production of her very fine play about love and the power and control that language bestows on a man who is a descendant of the most famous letter writer in dramatic literature, Cyrano de Bergerac.

Unlike Edmond Rostand's swashbuckling hero, Mr Rouvesquen, who once wanted to be a writer, is a rather dour bureaucrat tied to his desk, though he does unwind with music on the CD player and a goodly selection of fine wines. He is played by Peter Hambleton in peak form.

He writes letters for people who have problems with writing and expressing themselves because they are inhibited or illiterate or foreigners. But like Cyrano, Mr Rouvesquen gets involved emotionally, against his better judgment, in the affairs of one of his clients.

He ignores the injunction in the poem by Yeats that he quotes: "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams". His client becomes a surrogate son and he falls into the trap of trying to protect him by deceiving him.

Lansko (Benoit Blanc), a young man flees a totalitarian country, leaving behind his wife Leila (Anne Barbot), and seeks political asylum in a neighbouring country, where he asks Mr Rouvesquen for assistance in applying for asylum as well as writing love letters to Leila.

Comic relief is provided by the other clients. There is a farcical postman (Tim Gordon), who suffers from logorrhoea, a lady (Helen Moulder), who does not want her children to bury her next to her sister, and a beekeeper (Tim Gordon), who needs a speech to give at his daughter's wedding. When asked by the letter writer in some anger why he persists with the speech, replies: "Because a person who doesn't master their words . . . " but is, poignantly, unable to finish.

Tracey Monastra's set design adaptation of the original stage production in France brilliantly transforms moveable panels into office furniture and walls as well as providing dark alleyways in the totalitarian country, which is powerfully suggested by an occasional searchlight prowling the buildings and Jennifer Lal's eerie lighting and Stephen Gallagher's haunting music and sound effects.

It is a thrilling evening in the theatre: it is acted to the hilt by all, its production values are superb, and it combines comedy with tragedy in such a way that the play reverberates long after it is seen.

Possibly the sleeper production of the festival and, obviously, not to be missed.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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